Once completed, Simon will have the
ability to understand and manage thousands of control points from an energy
potential perspective as well as integrate real time results of any point to
match the business strategy of maximizing comfort and performance while
minimizing energy costs.

Statistics. Simon
Property Group, Inc. (SPG), headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, is a real
estate investment trust engaged in the ownership, development and management of
retail real estate, primarily regional malls, Premium Outlet centers and
community/lifestyle centers. Through its subsidiary partnership, it currently
owns or has an interest in 324 properties in the United States containing an
aggregate of 245 million square feet of gross leasable area in 41 states plus
Puerto Rico. Simon also holds interests in 53 European shopping centers in
France, Italy and Poland; 5 Premium Outlet centers in Japan; and one Premium
Outlet center in Mexico.

SPG is the largest publicly traded retail real estate
company in North America with a total market capitalization of approximately $56
billion.

Problem. With
over 245 million square feet of leasable property, Simon Property Group was
seeking a solution which would allow them to leverage the most innovative and
advanced technology in Building Automation fully integrated with Automated Meter
Reading. Historically, Simon Property Group has manually read thousands of check
meters in order to measure common area, tenant, and heating & cooling plant
energy usages. Simon had inherited legacy systems as they expanded their
portfolio of properties. Many of these legacy systems needed significant
technical updates and had limited support options.

Solution. Seeing
the forest through the trees is an understatement when the Energy Service
Group facilitated two large projects at the same time. Simon committed to
installing new automation systems at most of the active sites as well as install
thousands of common area and tenant meters. Simon realized that there needed to
be an intelligent middleware solution which would enable automated reads of all
metered loads, as well as provide a means to implement energy efficiency
initiatives via the entrally managed Building Automation System. Simon needed a
technical solution that would allow implementation of centralized operational
decisions creating a very High Tech Low Touch Enterprise Energy Management
system. This new system would provide load shedding and demand response programs
for million of square foot of facilities distributed throughout North America by
coupling automated metering platform and the building automation systems into a
single business tool. Ultimately, this undertaking was envisioned to increase
SPGs control and efficiency through an effective coupling of integrated building
systems.

How? Simon
Property Group, Inc. turned towards Roth Brothers to install the Andover
Building Automation systems throughout the portfolio and Facility Solutions
Group (FSG) to implement the largest North American deployment of networked
Sub-meters throughout their properties (over 2500 and counting). The primary
goal was to efficiently provide building system and meter data to the Corporate
Enterprise Energy Management Systems at the Simon Property Corporate
Headquarters in Indianapolis, IN. Their secondary goal was to integrate
the check meters into their existing common area Energy Management System (EMS),
providing the ability to query data to and from the existing EMS (Tour Andover
Controls/JCI/etc.) and then actually, provide tenants energy information on
actual usage. “With ever increasing utility rates, we needed a way to have our
metering systems provide real time data to the properties EMS to implement
energy efficiency and cost reduction strategies without sacrificing comfort. The
Richards-Zeta (RZ) Mediator is being used as a building systems platform to
aggregate electric metering (via hard wired and wireless) information. This
information is automatically sent via HTTP (XML format) to our PML/ION
Enterprise Energy Management systems in Indianapolis,” says Andy Marsh of Simon
Property Group. (See attached architecture.)

Facility Solutions Group (FSG) was looking for a communication ‘gateway’ which
would aggregate and bi-directionally move data to/from the check meters (both
hard wired and wireless) and the EMS and into its Meter Data Management Systems.
To facilitate this, FSG installed a Richards-Zeta-(RZ) Mediator Multi-Protocol
Exchange (MPX) platform. The Mediator™ is a powerful middleware solution
comprised of both hardware and software. This domain-agnostic integration
framework is able to communicate with a number of disparate protocols. In
Simon’s case, the meters communicate via Modbus Protocol and the EMS system
communicates via BACnet protocol. The MPX software framework plays a central
role in the integration process by normalizing both IP and legacy serial based
protocols, which in turn allows for intra-protocol communication, the uniform
application of services such as logging, and the common presentation of
information that is sourced from the array of intelligent machines found in
buildings.

Data from check meters is collected via hard wired
and wireless network topology by the RZ Mediator. The RZ Mediator stores and
logs site specific meter data and sends this information each evening via XML to
the PML/ION Energy Management System located on the Simon network. Select points
are also integrated back into the EMS systems to better manage the load profile
of common areas and tenant spaces in real-time.

Value Proposition.
By installing the RZ Mediator, Simon Property Group is able to utilize their
existing Andover Energy Management systems installed on the company intranet to
automate, analyze, and measure Energy Management Practices. Using the RZ
Mediator enabled with a BACnet/IP Driver, Simon Property Group is able to auto
discover new BACnet devices and use the information within the Mediator,
negating any requirement to hardwire pulses from the metering to the EMS.
Additionally, the RZ Mediator is providing real time data for use in peak
shaving and day ahead/real time load responses and demand response programs.

With numerous properties already implemented and many
more slated in the next year, this project will dramatically enhance Simon’s
capabilities to measure and control building operation and energy consumption in
real-time. Once completed, Simon will have the ability to understand and manage
thousands of control points from an energy potential perspective as well as
integrate real time results of any point to match the business strategy of
maximizing comfort and performance while minimizing energy costs. Deploying and
applying the RZ Mediator, with its integration capabilities, is a critical piece
to the success of Simon’s Energy Management strategy.